The Bruins have taken too many penalties pretty much all season. It also hasn't really cost them too much, thanks to a penalty kill that was a league-best 91% entering Friday.
Well, all that time spent in the box might finally be catching up to Boston. At least it has in a couple recent losses, including Friday afternoon's 5-2 defeat to the Detroit Red Wings, who have now handed the Bruins both of their regulation losses this season.
The Bruins gave Detroit six power plays on Friday. Every time they seemed to be getting some momentum going, they killed it with another penalty. The penalty kill was unable to bail the Bruins out the way it has for so much of the season, surrendering two power-play goals and another goal that came right after a Red Wings power play ended.
With their six penalties on Friday, the Bruins have now been called for 82 minor penalties on the season, third-most in the NHL. They took seven on Monday in their 5-4 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, including one late in regulation that helped the Lightning build momentum while trailing by a goal and eventually tie the game 15 seconds after it expired.
The Bruins got off to a sluggish start Friday and handed Detroit the game's first power play 5:02 in when Morgan Geekie unnecessarily grabbed Justin Holl's jersey while trying to beat out an icing. Just 11 seconds into the man advantage, J.T. Compher set up shop in front of the net and tipped in a point shot from Shayne Gostisbehere.
The holding call on Geekie may have been marginal, but the Bruins got a power play of their own on a similarly marginal hold by David Perron just a couple minutes later. They were unable to take advantage, though.
After falling behind 2-0 later in the first period when Matt Poitras gift-wrapped a breakaway goal to Alex DeBrincat, the Bruins' power play did step up to cut the lead to one early in the second. David Pastrnak curled towards the middle and fired a shot that produced a rebound for Jake DeBrusk, who kept banging away in front and eventually flipped the puck past Ville Husso for his second goal in as many games.
Penalty trouble once again caught up to the Bruins later in the period, though, when Mason Lohrei high-sticked Christian Fischer during a net-front battle. The Bruins officially killed the penalty, but surrendered a goal seconds after it expired following a failed clear by Brandon Carlo. That led to additional zone time for the Red Wings, and Robby Fabbri got open in the right circle before ripping a shot past Jeremy Swayman.
The Bruins again cut the lead to one early in the third when a Lohrei shot went wide before popping right back out front for Danton Heinen to bury. And they again gave the momentum back by taking a penalty, this time a hook from Carlo just 50 seconds after the goal. The Red Wings power play again struck immediately, with Compher setting up Dylan Larkin in front just six seconds into the man advantage.
"We'll have to look at some video on that," Charlie Coyle said of the PK's atypical struggles. "Because that's a strength of ours that we take pride in. We don't want to take penalties, but when we do, we take pride in getting ourselves out of jams and killing those, and we didn't do nearly a good enough job today doing that. So, there's certain things that we can correct and do better. But yeah, it seems like they've done a good job against us this year with that, and that's something we need to look at."
The Bruins took a couple more penalties in the third – a cross-check from Carlo and the same from Brad Marchand – to effectively kill any chance they were going to have of mounting a comeback. David Perron settled the 5-2 final with an empty-netter.
Earlier this season, the Bruins managed to win a pair of games against the Predators and Kings despite giving their opponent seven and six power plays, respectively. Since then, though, there's been a pretty simple trend for the Bruins.
When they give their opponent three power plays or fewer, they win. They're 11-0-0 in such games this season. When they give their opponent four power plays or more, they probably lose. Of the last six games they've done that, they've won one.
In some of those losses, Bruins coach Jim Montgomery has found fault in the officiating. On Friday, though, he believed the Bruins had no one to blame but themselves.
"The two games I think previous to this one were not the same. This one was self-inflicted. We did it to ourselves tonight," Montgomery said.
Whether every penalty-laden game has been the same or not, the fact remains that the Bruins are simply taking too many penalties. Their penalty kill can and will bail them out to an extent, but the more they test it, the more days like Friday become an occasional inevitability.
